RIP chrono

When I thought anet couldn't surprise me more, here they come with shatters that can only be activated when you have illusions up. No on-demand shatters to cleanse, heal, interrupt, remove boons, reflect or CS if you have 0 clones.

Comments

I feel the same way. You destroyed chrono. This is something completely different. Why would after so many years since chrono came out with HoT you go and do something like this? It makes no sense. And why only add this illusion restriction to chrono and not mirage? This nerf constant to the core and HoT specializations is to force us to play the crappy PoF classes. It's been like that since all the "balance" updates started after PoF came out. If you want us to play PoF classes, you should stop changing core game classes and HoT classes and focus on making the PoF stuff more attractive by itself, not by destroying the other specializations.

Yeah...its outer kitten. Did a pvp match right now...i could shatter for maybe half a second until these kitten clones get destroyed. And since Mesmer is build arround those shatters to survive kitten...yeah. Back to condi cancer mirage...or maybe a other game.glares over to wow Yeah..i think i give it a try right now. Sick of these constant nerfs mesmers had to go through.

It would be like tying warrior stances to adrenaline use and making it possible for people to drain adrenaline on the warrior. How many warriors would get used in WvW without their stances available in large engagements?

LMAO, i knew this restriction was gonna destroy chrono. Mesmers need the shatters for survival and offence. Adding such a dumb clone restriction just cripples the profession as a whole. gg Anet and RIP chrono.

"All the talent in this world won't take you anywhere without your Teammates
Trust them, Res them, Support them"

Who taught of this idea... seriously? I can't even think of a shatter build from before pre-HoT patch that didn't use illusionary persona and you know. IT WAS STATED THAT MESMER HAS TO SHATTER... Mindless numbs of ANET.

Not only is the removal of self shattering possibly the most idiotic decision made since the introduction of aoe evade well, placing a 1 second distortion on a 105 second cooldown as your only defensive shatter is also grossly overnerfing and unnecessary. This confirms that no one with any say at Anet has any clue how mesmer works whatsoever in pvp/wvw.

yeah who would want to play chrono with a 105s distort cooldown when you can go back to base mesmer or mirage and still have the 50s cd and no illusion restriction. might have well said on the notes "well we decided to delete chrono specialization from the game, in the mean time we wont have a HoT spec for mesmers". there is no value in playing chrono right now, before with the Signet of Inspiration nerf and now this.

To think that this idea was actually implemented shows us that there isnt anyone in the balance team who has the brain of even a 4 year old. I am just mind blown. I mean, its okay to make unique shatters (making distortion and CS into one was dumb anyway) but why add this restriction ? Its what mesmers are and sometimes there are desperate needs for these shatters that can change an outcome. Seriously, there was no thought given on this change.

"All the talent in this world won't take you anywhere without your Teammates
Trust them, Res them, Support them"

1) About IP, we live without it during 3 years, even in shatter builds. (even if people didn't agree with me that's basically what I play 50% of my time in WvW.).
2) There seems to be a good condi potential on condi chrono. I will test it.
3) They should remove the anti-contributing on F4 now ...

For real I started maining chrono a few months ago and slowly bought all the ascended gear for it, I had 3 weeks total will full gear and they gut it so hard I’m having to gear somthing else. Absolute joke arena net.

I had to login on the forums for the first time in months to voice my disappointment. For mesmers that used to play chrono in WvW this is absolutely moronic, for lack of a better word. Apparently the only viable role for mesmer in WvW must be "mirage roamer". Nice.

Well RIP then, wvw is a complete goner for Chrono now. Overall Chrono feels veeery slow now compared to before - the shatters feel extremly clunky and you can't combo anymore because of the 1 Shatter Requirement. The change itself is just too big for a trade off - it is better to play core or mirage for PvP (Core sucks but hey we have Mirage yay...). Even pve chrono really feels not good - the Shatters are just not there to shatter when u need them if something happens unexpected.
The distortion loss was big (and imo enough of a trade off) but losing the ability to self and shatter without clones completely brakes it for me.

There was a reason why in the early GW2 times Illusionary Persona was baseline for almost any build.

I have registered to this forum specifically to post in this thread.
I need to know the name of that one guy who came up with this shatter garbage and thought "know what? That's a good idea", and all the other bigwigs around who were listening and didnt't stop this madness. I don't even know if I'll revert back to vanilla mesmer or stop playing at all, I just know that chronomancer right now is an insult.

After all the nerfs to chrono, they literally kill off the spec. The changes make no sense at all. A big part of defence for any mes spec is distortion. Is this a ridiculous ploy to try to make more people buy PoF to play mirage? I'm not sure what game mode this was aimed at, but it definitely wasn't PvP. I also don't understand why they think chrono is more powerful than mirage so that it needs this crippling nerf.

In the game since launch. Used in pretty much almost all shatter builds since launch. Not sure what you are refering to. Yes, it was baseline for only the last 3 years. That is not the same as it not existing. IP was in game and was one of the core essential traits on almost all builds. The trait was literally made baseline BECAUSE it was so essential to the class, that was even the reasoning for making it baseline back then.

This change was ill thought out and not necessary. NOTHING about IP was OP or Broken, it gave Mesmers a way to cleanse and a defensive option while still being viable in the current game. Now waiting for clones, "ie more time wasted" then timing a shatter "ie Very Small Window since clones die to a SNEEZE" to proc anything as you are being used as a punching bag? Seriously? My faith in the devs and there ability to balance even in a half way semblance of a competent team is dwindling fast.

@Noodle Ant.1605 said:
Split Second is strictly weaker than Mind Wrack, only except for 3 clones with slow (where it deals the same dmg anyway).

Big RIP.

Thanks for the info. I was going to log in to try the new shatters guess I don't need.
It seems like: hey we removed IP and distortion and in return we gave you new even worse shatters.
I wonder why I still bother with ANerf.

@Noodle Ant.1605 said:
Split Second is strictly weaker than Mind Wrack, only except for 3 clones with slow (where it deals the same dmg anyway).

Big RIP.

Thanks for the info. I was going to log in to try the new shatters guess I don't need.
It seems like: hey we removed IP and distortion and in return we gave you new even worse shatters.
I wonder why I still bother with ANerf.

What is worse is knowing them they will ride this train all high and mighty and won't do a thing to change it till a paid expansion comes out.

In the game since launch. Used in pretty much almost all shatter builds since launch. Not sure what you are refering to. Yes, it was baseline for only the last 3 years. That is not the same as it not existing. IP was in game and was one of the core essential traits on almost all builds. The trait was literally made baseline BECAUSE it was so essential to the class, that was even the reasoning for making it baseline back then.

Almost all build = kikoo duelist on EB and some PvP player (btw mesmer was farmed by thieves at that times in PvP.)
So no very few builds used IP before they oriented mesmer gameplay to shatter only.

@Nepster.4275 said:
This happens when you let people who are not even playing to do the balance patches.

Those chrono changes (not only today, but today they ruined it finally) show how out of touch balance team is... even freaking scrapper got some improvements, even this piece of junk, and chrono is just MONUMENTALLY RUINED. Holy kitten...

@Hectorim Sears.1479 said:
Is "dry" shattering so important? Seriously, reading all of the above comments, I'm kind of amazed. Back in vanilla, many builds did not use Illusionary Persona at all...

"Dry" Shattering is important to some, and in some situations absolutely necessary. Take this for example, pre nerf, you could distort off yourself, so say you have a ranged class on you "ie Ranger", and your reflect is on cool down, and of course, ANET loves their rangers so you know Longbow hits way further then tool tip. What do? Pre Nerf, you could distort, buy time, get cover, heal, kite, etc. But now that it is solely dependent on clones, guess who's range wins? Say you could get a clone off, those clones die at stubbing a toe. This makes us more or less sitting ducks unless we pull some clones off, time it, shatter it, and hope that did the job cause the second we shatter them, we need to repeat that that entire PROCESS to even get some sort of cover/defense/attack again since it is now 100% tied to only shattering. In short, killed the class, er, spec.

@Nepster.4275 said:
This happens when you let people who are not even playing to do the balance patches.

Those chrono changes (not only today, but today they ruined it finally) show how out of touch balance team is... even freaking scrapper got some improvements, even this piece of junk, and chrono is just MONUMENTALLY RUINED. Holy kitten...

Most of the Scrapper rework is net nerf. That's not counting the -300 Vitality.

@Hectorim Sears.1479 said:
Is "dry" shattering so important? Seriously, reading all of the above comments, I'm kind of amazed. Back in vanilla, many builds did not use Illusionary Persona at all...

"Dry" Shattering is important to some, and in some situations absolutely necessary. Take this for example, pre nerf, you could distort off yourself, so say you have a ranged class on you "ie Ranger", and your reflect is on cool down, and of course, ANET loves their rangers so you know Longbow hits way further then tool tip. What do? Pre Nerf, you could distort, buy time, get cover, heal, kite, etc. But now that it is solely dependent on clones, guess who's range wins? Say you could get a clone off, those clones die at stubbing a toe. This makes us more or less sitting ducks unless we pull some clones off, time it, shatter it, and hope that did the job cause the second we shatter them, we need to repeat that that entire PROCESS to even get some sort of cover/defense/attack again since it is now 100% tied to only shattering. In short, killed the class, er, spec.

That's my point - F4 with no clones is 1 sec of evasion. If you're against a LB Ranger with no CDs left aside from F4, doesn't that mean that you're dead anyway?

@Hectorim Sears.1479 said:
Is "dry" shattering so important? Seriously, reading all of the above comments, I'm kind of amazed. Back in vanilla, many builds did not use Illusionary Persona at all...

I used it all the time in open world. Double time warp for no reason, double gravity well into approaching mob hordes. I played a round Dragonfall and tbh is was annoying. Clones die fast in monster packs or they despawn instantly when the zerg murders the enemies they are attached to. If you want to use shatters at all might as well just smash the F keys as fast as you can to get at least any use out of them.

I liked the longer csplit duration and alac/quickness from the shatters for purely selfish reasons. But ugh, this plays not very well now.

That's my point - F4 with no clones is 1 sec of evasion. If you're against a LB Ranger with no CDs left aside from F4, doesn't that mean that you're dead anyway?

That 1 second is the difference between a good dodge and a distort or eating a rapid fire.

But hey, this is Anet, and Im almost certain the balance team don't even play the game, or least seems like they don't. These changes/nerfs to classes/specs is more just "to do something" rather then "do something productive". That's all I'm going to say on it.

@Hectorim Sears.1479 said:
Is "dry" shattering so important? Seriously, reading all of the above comments, I'm kind of amazed. Back in vanilla, many builds did not use Illusionary Persona at all...

I used it all the time in open world. Double time warp for no reason, double gravity well into approaching mob hordes. I played a round Dragonfall and tbh is was annoying. Clones die fast in monster packs or they despawn instantly when the zerg murders the enemies they are attached to. If you want to use shatters at all might as well just smash the F keys as fast as you can to get at least any use out of them.

I liked the longer csplit duration and alac/quickness from the shatters for purely selfish reasons. But ugh, this plays not very well now.

I understand dry shattering an F5, it was pretty much a thing ever since this e-spec was introduced, and that nerf I understand - no more double-casting on demand is a giant nerf (truth be told double-casting an Elite is pretty OP...), but weren't other F abilities pretty niche when cast like that?

On the other note - if things haven't changed, the F abilities light up before the clone actually shows, which would make Staff 2, Sword 3, Scepter and clone-on-dodge more important now as fast ways to enable shatters, right?

1 sec distort to avoid a single timed attack. Remove condi out of combat when traited (that super annoying 15 sec remaining cripple), on demand stability with otherwise useless shatters for your build when traited (and other useful boons for you). A bit of alacrity and when traited quickness from them. Quite a few things I used them for that were just interesting/fun/nice to have.

1 sec distort to avoid a single timed attack. Remove condi out of combat when traited (that super annoying 15 sec remaining cripple), on demand stability with otherwise useless shatters for your build when traited (and other useful boons for you). A bit of alacrity and when traited quickness from them. Quite a few things I used them for that were just interesting/fun/nice to have.

When you put it like that, I guess it was quite useful, if not only for quality of life and de-clunking (I didn't know shatter cleanse worked out of combat).

And as you mention "useless" shatters... Reminds me why I stopped playing the profession in the first place - it just never meshed well with itself, ever. You either used clones OR phantasms, either used shatters OR did not at all, and if you did, only half of them were somewhat useful for your build. I'm still sad about that. After playing with Mesmer for a few days after launch, I created an Engineer, then I unlocked Grenades and the Flamethrower and never looked back.

Sigh, well, thanks for being constructive and nice. Most Mesmers are so salty right now they are probably looking for a head to chew off.

@Hectorim Sears.1479 said:
Is "dry" shattering so important? Seriously, reading all of the above comments, I'm kind of amazed. Back in vanilla, many builds did not use Illusionary Persona at all...

I used it all the time in open world. Double time warp for no reason, double gravity well into approaching mob hordes. I played a round Dragonfall and tbh is was annoying. Clones die fast in monster packs or they despawn instantly when the zerg murders the enemies they are attached to. If you want to use shatters at all might as well just smash the F keys as fast as you can to get at least any use out of them.

I liked the longer csplit duration and alac/quickness from the shatters for purely selfish reasons. But ugh, this plays not very well now.

I understand dry shattering an F5, it was pretty much a thing ever since this e-spec was introduced, and that nerf I understand - no more double-casting on demand is a giant nerf (truth be told double-casting an Elite is pretty OP...), but weren't other F abilities pretty niche when cast like that?

On the other note - if things haven't changed, the F abilities light up before the clone actually shows, which would make Staff 2, Sword 3, Scepter and clone-on-dodge more important now as fast ways to enable shatters, right?

More realistically it highlights just how deficient our clone generation mechanics are. Staff 2 is decent, but staff itself is awful in most areas of the game. Sword 3 requires you to be very close to the enemy and has a cast time, so it's useless for any kind of fast reaction. Scepter auto is slow and needs 3 autoattacks to make a clone, so that's totally useless. Scepter 2 is great...but not for clone generation. You can block the attack, but by the time you get your clones the attack is over.

@Hectorim Sears.1479 said:
Is "dry" shattering so important? Seriously, reading all of the above comments, I'm kind of amazed. Back in vanilla, many builds did not use Illusionary Persona at all...

I used it all the time in open world. Double time warp for no reason, double gravity well into approaching mob hordes. I played a round Dragonfall and tbh is was annoying. Clones die fast in monster packs or they despawn instantly when the zerg murders the enemies they are attached to. If you want to use shatters at all might as well just smash the F keys as fast as you can to get at least any use out of them.

I liked the longer csplit duration and alac/quickness from the shatters for purely selfish reasons. But ugh, this plays not very well now.

I understand dry shattering an F5, it was pretty much a thing ever since this e-spec was introduced, and that nerf I understand - no more double-casting on demand is a giant nerf (truth be told double-casting an Elite is pretty OP...), but weren't other F abilities pretty niche when cast like that?

On the other note - if things haven't changed, the F abilities light up before the clone actually shows, which would make Staff 2, Sword 3, Scepter and clone-on-dodge more important now as fast ways to enable shatters, right?

More realistically it highlights just how deficient our clone generation mechanics are. Staff 2 is decent, but staff itself is awful in most areas of the game. Sword 3 requires you to be very close to the enemy and has a cast time, so it's useless for any kind of fast reaction. Scepter auto is slow and needs 3 autoattacks to make a clone, so that's totally useless. Scepter 2 is great...but not for clone generation. You can block the attack, but by the time you get your clones the attack is over.

I think a range increase on Sword 3 would solve my biggest gripe with it. As for Scepter, I will always love it, even if it is considered a redhead stepchild of Mesmer weapon family. You can use auto-attack chain outside of combat! That has to count for something. I always hated Staff for having a power-oriented Phantasm on a condi-predominant weapon... Chaos Storm should have been a skill for Scepter mumble.

On the PVE side, my biggest gripe is that I can't pre-stack boons nearly as well at the mistlock singularities. Before I would go:

Continuum Split
Tides of Time
Alacrity Well (split ends)
mimic
Alacrity Well
Quickness Well
Alacrity Well
Singularity
Continuum Split
Tides of Time
Alacrity Well (split ends)
Alacrity Well
Quickness Well
Swap mimic to SoI then use SoI.

Doing this, I could stack up around 40 seconds of alacrity on a group before a boss. It sounds excessive, but it was quite necessary, as standing in wells is harder in fractals than it is anywhere else. Now, with no continuum splits, I'm losing x2 tides and x2 wells.

I'm glad I finished crafting a fractal ready alacrigade before this update.

"Self awareness is knowing when you're sitting at the throne of ignorance." --Leo G.

I "get" why they made the the shatter and IP changes to Chronomancer. Chrono has access to quickness and alacrity..thus clone generating skills should come sooner than Mirage or Mesmer. But it still is a big hit going back before IP.

But in doing so, they should also consider adjusting more of the Chrono traits to help out with the adjustment. Like reverting Illusionary Reversion back to only requiring 2 clones, removing/reducing the duration penalty to Improved Alactrity, and/or redoing some the changes to shield. (set it back to how it worked originally.. its so clunky now.)

Maybe have a trait that if a clone pass thru a well, it duplicates.. or whatever... A lot of base Mesmer nerfs that happened because of Chrono should be re-looked at. (if they ever get Mirage settled out.)

Are the other professions going to have similar tradeoffs on their elites???

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:
On the PVE side, my biggest gripe is that I can't pre-stack boons nearly as well at the mistlock singularities. Before I would go:

Continuum Split
Tides of Time
Alacrity Well (split ends)
mimic
Alacrity Well
Quickness Well
Alacrity Well
Singularity
Continuum Split
Tides of Time
Alacrity Well (split ends)
Alacrity Well
Quickness Well
Swap mimic to SoI then use SoI.

Doing this, I could stack up around 40 seconds of alacrity on a group before a boss. It sounds excessive, but it was quite necessary, as standing in wells is harder in fractals than it is anywhere else. Now, with no continuum splits, I'm losing x2 tides and x2 wells.

I'm glad I finished crafting a fractal ready alacrigade before this update.

After looking at this rotation, maybe Anet's idea is to swat unintended mechanics (skill-swapping after CS, massive amount of pre-emptive Alacrity) while disguising it as a balance pass...

Wow. I thought chrono had already been nerfed too much, but this... I don’t see how this was considered at all a good idea. As far as I can see, this has ruined the fun and utility of chrono in any game mode. Another spec I will not be playing any more.